Controlled generation and manipulation of vortex dipoles in a Bose-Einstein condensate

Creation and characterization of vortex clusters in atomic Bose-Einstein condensates

“…The dimensionality of such condensates can be easily controlled, allowing direct study of vortices in two and three dimensions. Advanced experimental methods for the imaging and detection of vortices in Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) have been developed [23] and new theoretical proposals have shown that vortices can be easily manipulated in BECs [24]. There are many techniques that can be applied to nucleate vortices in BECs, such as: engineering the condensate phase profile [25,26]; stirring the condensate with a blue or red detuned laser (for experiments see [27,28] and theory [24,29,30]); mixing and merging condensates of well defined phases [31][32][33]; moving a condensate past a defect [28]; rotating the trapping potential or thermal cloud [34][35][36][37][38][39]; and cooling the condensate with a rapid quench through the phase transition (Kibble-Zurek mechanism) [40][41][42].…”

“…Advanced experimental methods for the imaging and detection of vortices in Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) have been developed [23] and new theoretical proposals have shown that vortices can be easily manipulated in BECs [24]. There are many techniques that can be applied to nucleate vortices in BECs, such as: engineering the condensate phase profile [25,26]; stirring the condensate with a blue or red detuned laser (for experiments see [27,28] and theory [24,29,30]); mixing and merging condensates of well defined phases [31][32][33]; moving a condensate past a defect [28]; rotating the trapping potential or thermal cloud [34][35][36][37][38][39]; and cooling the condensate with a rapid quench through the phase transition (Kibble-Zurek mechanism) [40][41][42]. Finally, vortices can be nucleated from dynamical instabilities, such as through the decay of the snake instability of a soliton [43,44], the bending wave instability of a vortex ring [45,46] or surface mode excitations of the condensate [47,48].…”